Day 39

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June 20^th. Waking up at bush camp was such a painful experience! I slept well, only waking up a few times to switch positions. When my alarm went off at 7:00 am, it was too soon. I was nice and warm inside my sleeping bag, but I could feel the cold on my face, and it burned! Andrew had said something the other day about pulling your clothes into your sleeping bag to warm them, so I decided to try it. My clothes felt like ice, so I snuggled them for a few minutes. I ended up actually dressing inside the sleeping bag, which takes a degree of skill! But, getting out of the bed was still awful! While washing my face and brushing my teeth, my fingers went completely numb. I got ready and packed all my stuff up as quickly as I could move, half-frozen. I was ready around 7:40, and got to scarf down a cup of coffee right as the Twines gang were pulling up in the Cruiser to pick us up for road clearing. Jamie and Leon picked me, Lauren, and Daniel up, and we all headed to the clearing site. On the way, we saw fresh rhino tracks on the road. We got slightly distracted by them, and followed to see if we could find them. We were thinking it might be a female with a week old baby. We ended up losing the trail, and not finding them at the dam we thought they might have headed to. So we went back to the road-clearing plan. We didn’t get there and get started until about 8:30, and it was still pretty cold. We worked for a while, and Jamie and Leon asked us to collect firewood as we were clearing. So we were working on pulling some dead bush willow branches off a tree, when Leon accidentally twisted his knee, which he had injured previously. He couldn’t walk on it, so we had to go take him back to camp. Then, we went back to the road clearing and worked for another hour or so. It got quite hot all the sudden, because it was a nice clear sky. We got back to camp around 10:45, and I took a nice, hot, uncomplicated shower, unlike at bush camp! Since I didn’t cook yesterday, since I was at bush camp, I elected to take over Jamie’s lunch shift. Jon and I chopped up fresh veggies for lunch, and I made egg salad so we could have some nice sandwiches. We ate around 12:15, and it was quite yummy. Everyone was relaxing for the afternoon, and I went to make myself a cup of coffee. Of course, while I was innocently minding my own business, getting a coffee mug, Lukas decides to pour a glass of cold water down my neck. Great. Well that started a pretty epic water battle. It eventually became Jon and Lukas against me, and of course, they were mostly dry and I was soaked! I actually changed after the first few buckets of water and sat in the sun to dry off, cause I thought it was done! But then, of course, the boys couldn’t leave well enough alone. Typical. But it’s okay! By the end, they were both soaking and Lukas was even muddy. The water fight lasted a good hour, all around the camp. Then, we all went to shower off, and I got a second hot shower in one day! So lucky. :) We left on drive at 2:30, and it was supposed to be a buffalo and lion drive with Leon and Lukas. Well, we had heard there was a lions on a kill that morning, so we went to find them before the buffalo. We spent a few hours trying to find the dang kill, because the other people gave us really bad directions to the site. Eventually, we found it, but we had to defer to the Makalali rangers, because they called in to respond first. Eventually, though, we got into the sighting and got to see the Tembe females taking a little snooze, no kill in sight. We stayed with them, and they later got up and moved off into a different bush. When we followed, we found them feeding on their kill, an adult waterbuck. It was such a cool sighting, even though it was through some bushes, cause we got to watch them feed and interact. We stayed with them for about 2 hours, and all the trucks had finally left. We got some great pictures, and Phil (the photographer) and Leon were taking cool night shots with the spotlight and their nice cameras. We had decided to scratch the nyati (buffalo) from the drive tonight, in order to stay with the lions longer! On the way home from the sighting, we saw three hyena, two adult and a subadult, in the bush. We off-roaded to see them interacting and laying down, which may indicate a possible den site. We were able to get some good pictures in a clearing, and it was an awesome sighting. It was definitely the best hyena sighting I have had, and we watched them for a good 15 minutes. Then we headed home again, and arrived a little before 7. I made some tea, and worked on my computer a bit as dinner was finished up. Then, we enjoyed a nice hot chicken poitjie that Jamie had made for us while we were on drive. Everyone decided to turn in early, and I headed to the lounge to catch up on my blogging from the past few days, as well as work on my project. I am presenting some of my research to the whole gang tomorrow after lunch. Which is super cool, for one, but also, I am not as far as I wanted to be, so it will be difficult to do. I am staying home from driving tomorrow morning so I can focus on working on the project.

Giraffe family! So cute!

Sleepy Nandi after a nice big meal!